In November 2006 the Oxford-based campaign group Corporate Watch published an important critique of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This short feature has been extracted, with permission, from the report.

It sounds like something straight out of a conspiracy theory – the shadowy Codex Alimentarius Commission has been quietly making decisions about the food we eat for decades. With obesity and malnutrition reaching record highs in the UK, Leonie Nimmo asks whose interests they have really been protecting.

With The Body Shop’s acquisition by L’Oréal, the rate of takeovers of smaller ethical companies by multinational corporations is increasing. Ethical Consumer magazine asks whether we should be alarmed or jubilant.

To many in the ethical consumption movement, marketing is a dark art synonymous with greenwash. So what to make of a marketing guru who wants to use “green marketing” as a Trojan horse, smuggling ethics and green lifestyles into the citadel of consumer society?